SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

I opened my review of the recent Carmen broadcast from the Met by mentioning how I had seen a documentary on the opera from 1973 featuring a very fresh and rotund Plácido Domingo singing Don José in Hamburg near the beginning of his career. Here, 37 years on from that Domingo is still singing, not as a famous tenor but, for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera, in a baritone role.

Domingo began his career by auditioning as a baritone and in 1959 when he sang for the jury at the National Opera in Mexico City, despite impressing them, they told him he was really a tenor : as such, a couple of years later he sang his first major tenor role, as Alfredo, in Verdi’s La traviata in Monterrey. His lack of risk taking, some compliant managements and conductors and his superb dramatic gifts have resulted in an outstanding career that needs no detailing here, but now having ‘officially’ just turned 69, he has returned to his baritone beginnings for the title role in Simon Boccanegra.

So how is old Plácido Domingo? To paraphrase a celebrated telegram response by Cary Grant … old Plácido Domingo is better than could be expected. Yet if we are to believe that he is not more than 70, then physically he seems to be in some decline – in close up, both on stage and during the back stage interviews, he looked tired, somewhat hunched, a little shrunken, and with the hint of a limp. Perhaps he is over-doing things running the opera companies in Washington and Los Angeles and with all his conducting commitments. Vocally though, he was more and more impressive as the opera went on and, though I went in as a sceptic, I would have more than gladly cheered him at the end if this performance had it not been in a London cinema rather than the MET itself.

Simon Boccanegra was not a success when first staged in 1857. Verdi considered it ‘too sad’ and in collaboration with Arrigo Boito decided that, although the prologue and final two acts should remain more or less unaltered, Act I needed substantial changes with the injection of more variety and contrast. From this arose the famous Council Chamber scene; but Verdi also found it necessary to make large adjustments to several other portions of the score. The revised version had a successful première at La Scala Milan in 1881.

As the younger corsair, as Boccanegra is in the Prologue, Domingo wore a dark wig and beard and looked very much his old self - and sounded like his old self too – like a tenor. Yet 25 years later for Act I with his natural grey hair and beard and haggard features he was every bit the tormented first Doge of fourteenth-century Genoa. His voice had impressive stentorian chest-driven power and a baritional hue but never convinced me for a moment that he was a true baritone. He rose with ease to the heights of the register Verdi demands from him, but always with the forthright projection of a tenor and with little ability to make much of the long Verdian legato phrases. This Boccanegra seemed like a dark-hued tenor role, somewhat like Otello, and in something like the Act I Scene 1 in which the Doge finds out that Maria, who is known a Amelia Grimaldi, is his long-lost illegitimate daughter (yes it is that sort of convoluted plot!) their duet did not have anything like the contrast in soprano and baritone colouring that I am sure Verdi had in mind.

Domingo’s convincing acting – as is often the case – was the key to his triumph. He totally embodied Verdi’s imperfect man forced into a leadership role for which he does not feel suited, yet who tries to reconcile the conflicts between the Plebeians and the Nobles: someone who has made a mess of his personal life but eventually does right by his daughter as he succumbs to the effects of poison. Naturally enough, Barbara Willis Sweete’s direction for TV rarely had the cameras off Domingo whenever he was on stage.

This was a revival of Giancarlo del Monaco’s 1995 production in which Domingo originally sang Gabriele Adorno, Amelia’s lover. Michael Scott’s set is monumentally three-dimensional and together with sumptuous costumes, mostly scarlet or dark brown, truly redolent of Genoa as it might have been in the mid-fourteenth century. The setting of the Act I Council Chamber scene is so lavishly decorated as to generate a round of applause from the Met matinee audience.

As Amelia/Maria, the Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka was excellent, a very old-fashioned Verdi (and therefore quasi-Wagner) singer that we never seem to hear at Covent Garden these days; her sound was radiant and there was some beautiful phrasing. As the hot-headed Adorno, wearing Domingo’s old costume as it turned out, Marcello Giordani sang in his typical ‘can belto’ manner, securely and with some lack of refinement, but always with generous top notes. When I first saw him, he seemed to be a natural successor to Bergonzi, but now as the roles he sings take their toll on his resources, he sounds more Franco Bonisolli, of blessed memory. Paolo, the Iago-like villain role, was sung by Stephen Gaertner, darker and more evil in his vocal portrayal than his actual performance. Another old-stager, James Morris, sand Maria’s father and Boccanegra’s rival, Fiesco, an although his voice is not what it once was, he was best when it most mattered, in the final act when he discovers that Amelia/Maria, whom he thought was his ward, is actually Boccanegra’s daughter and his own granddaughter. Here this great Wotan also reminded us what true (bass) baritone singing actually sounds like and he gave his role an imposing timbral intensity, gravitas and authority.

Under Met Opera music director James Levine we were given a detailed –almost dissected - reading of Verdi’s score, in which the complications of the music can seem to mirror the complexity of the plot. Tempos were very relaxed and he luxuriated in the long phrases and the more poignant and affecting music. At times Verdi uses the chorus as a dramatic tool almost on a par with the main characters in the story and the well-drilled Met chorus made their usual potent contribution.

The back stage interviews were not as interesting as they have been in some previous broadcasts mainly through the host, Renée Fleming, being rather too sycophantic and spending most of her time gushing too many ‘Toi, Toi, Tois’ at those she spoke to. The performance was significant mostly for the longevity of some of those involved. For James Levine it was his 2,429th performance since his debut at the Met in 1976; for Domingo it was nearly 800 performances and for James Morris more than 900! Morris recounted how in 1965 (though it seems that it was actually 1967) he was performing in Tales of Hoffmann in Baltimore and he asked who the tenor would be and was told ‘some kid from Mexico’. 40 and more years later that ‘kid’ – Domingo of course – has long since grown up and in his dotage – or maybe Dogeage? – did not disappoint as a fine Boccanegra.

Jim Pritchard

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